Book Review: The Four Winds

It started at the quintessential Hallmark movie—awkward rich girl finds love with the cute poor guy well below her station—and quickly made a left turn into The Grapes of Wrath, the horrors of the Great Depression and the difficult work of organizing migrant workers in California.

The Four Winds was the first Kristen Hannah book I read—ahem—listened to. Friends, acquaintances and even Amazon have suggested Hannah's books to me many times before, so I was intrigued to see what the fuss was all about.

The Four Winds is a saga stretching across decades, following the lives of Elsa Martinelli and her children. Readers are along for the ride as she falls in love with Rafe, who rescues her from a loveless life in her loveless, rich family, to a lovely life on the farm with his Italian family—though Rafe never truly loves her and eventually leaves her. When dust storms and drought destroy the family livelihood, and Rafe deserts his family (including his parents, Rose and Tony), Elsa has to do what's best for her children and heads for California, where they've been promised work and a good life. Of course, the promises of California are too good to be true, and Elsa finds herself living hand-to-mouth, taking whatever work she can to feed her children. Finding work in the Welty Grower's Camp, Elsa quickly realizes she is trapped in a system that enslaves her and the other migrant workers. She turns to Jack Valen, a union organizer, and helps to advance the cause of the migrant workers.

Historical fiction is a genre a love. Many of my favorites are set in the World War II era, so it was nice to slip into a different timeframe. But truth be told, The Four Winds is a novel that I felt like I should love, and I just didn't. Here's why:

• It's a saga. This novel stretches across the years—and sometimes it feels like it. Even the audiobook felt a little plodding at times.

• Character development. Sometimes you can't put a book down because you love the characters, even though you often see their glaring flaws. Elsa was hard for me to fall in love with. I admired her; I wanted to see her prevail; I understood her fierce desire to protect her children—but I didn't love her. For me, Hannah spent too much time cycling through Elsa's thoughts, especially her belief that she is hideously ugly and a coward. While some of these things do seem to resolve toward the end of the novel, it was pretty exhausting to listen to Elsa bemoan how she was ugly and unloveable and a failure when the woman was raising two kids on next to nothing, generously giving to friends with less in the camp and striving to make a better life for others. Some characters never really develop: Elsa's son, Anthony, for example, is a sugary sweet annoying little boy and Jack Valen, Elsa's eventual love interest, is a bit cardboard, rarely showing depth and feeling a little like a set piece designed to move the plot along rather than someone we can fall in love with along with Elsa.

• Be brave. Elsa's mantra, passed down from a grandfather we never really know anything else about, is the driving message of the book. After all, The Four Winds is a book about independence—Elsa finding independence from her parents and becoming the brave woman she was always meant to be—but the phrase is repeated again and again and again. Maybe I was just in a bad mood the entire time I listened to the book, but I often found myself rolling my eyes when Elsa would once again repeat it as some new terrible event befell her family.

• All the terrible things. The Depression was undoubtedly a terrible time that I cannot imagine, but in Hannah's novel, the Martinelli's are faced with disaster after disaster with no time to breathe or come to grips with the situation. Maybe this is a realistic approach, but it can come off as melodramatic—debt, flood, death, shooting, one after another.

While The Four Winds wasn't my favorite read so far this year, I am glad I finished the novel—and, yes, I do plan to give some of Hannah's other fiction a try. There must be a reason so many people have recommended her to me over the years. While I found The Four Winds a tough listen, it was punctuated by some beautiful writing and descriptions and is deeply researched. Just because I didn't fall in love with Elsa Martinelli and her family doesn't mean you won't!

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